Secrets

by Robin Jones Gunn

  “Is school okay?”

  “Everyone misses you and wishes you would come back. The new principal is…, well, let’s just say she doesn’t seem to be out to make many friends this year.”

  “Your file—,” Hugh began, but Ida bustled in with Teri beside her.

  “All right, now,” Ida said efficiently. “Your time is up, Jessica, dear. It’s Teri’s turn.”

  “Your file…,” Hugh began again, but then stopped, apparently realizing that the visitors had switched positions, and it was now Teri who sat next to him.

  Jessica waited outside while Teri visited with Mr. McGregor for a few minutes. What about my file? What were you going to tell me?

  Against Ida’s warnings, Jessica slipped back in after Teri left and said, “You mentioned something about my file. Is there anything I need to know?”

  Hugh breathed out slowly and said, “I don’t remember.”

  Jessica wasn’t sure if he was tired and really couldn’t remember or if he could only tell her in private so he held back since Teri and Ida were standing beside her.

  “Well, don’t worry about anything,” Jessica said, trying to sound confident. “You just take it easy. I’ll be back to visit you as soon as I can. And if you happen to remember what you wanted to tell me about my file, you can tell me next time, okay?”

  Once the three of them slipped into the hallway, Ida spoke enthusiastically. “Isn’t it wonderful? The doctor isn’t predicting a full recovery yet, but he’s hopeful. Would you girls like to grab a bite to eat? It’s broccoli cheese soup day at the Wallflower.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve already had lunch,” Teri said.

  “Me, too,” added Jessica. “I’m so glad you called me. I’ll try to get back here to see him tomorrow or Saturday.”

  “Call me if you need a ride,” Ida said. “Oh, and Teri, you did tell Jessica about the big church picnic on Labor Day, didn’t you? Of course you’re invited. You’re both coming, aren’t you?”

  Teri turned to Jessica, suppressing a smile at Ida’s brimming-over enthusiasm. “You’re welcome to come.”

  “It’s always so much fun,” Ida continued. “Potato sack races, pie eating contests, and a coin toss fund-raiser. All money earned at the coin toss goes to our mission in Mexico.”

  “Kyle’s baby,” Teri said out of the side of her mouth to Jessica. Jessica had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I’ll see you young beauties at the picnic.” Ida waved cheerfully and hurried down the hallway toward the hospital exit.

  “What a sweetie,” Teri said. “That woman amazes me. I hope I have that much energy when I’m eighty-two.”

  “You’re kidding! She looks as if she’s about sixty,” Jessica said.

  “I know. Her husband looks his age, but Wendel is just as much fun as she is. He owned the hardware store for something like fifty years.” Teri led the way down the hall and back to her car in the hospital parking lot. “I wonder if Charlotte missed us while we were gone.”

  “Oh, please,” Jessica groaned as she got in the car and buckled up her seat belt. “Do you honestly believe she’ll make it through this whole school year as principal?”

  Before she could answer, Teri pulled onto Main Street. A bright yellow convertible sports car zipped past them. The teenaged girl at the steering wheel beeped her horn and waved at Teri. Teri waved back and called out, “Hi, Dawn.”

  “Dawn?” Jessica questioned. “Is that the doctor’s daughter?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Teri said. “You’ve just seen a flash of Dawn Laughlin, Girl Wonder.”

  “Pretty fancy car.”

  “Pretty fancy girl,” Teri quipped.

  “Anything particular I should know about her?” Jessica asked.

  “I’m not sure what I can tell you that you won’t discover for yourself. She’s a junior this year. Straight-A student, head cheerleader. Let’s see, what else? The new car was her sixteenth birthday present last May. She spent two months in Paris with her mom this summer. Actually, her parents are divorced; she’s the youngest child. The other two are married, and her mom lives in Paris. Dawn goes there every summer. Oh, and her mom is remarried to a millionaire. That’s all. Just your average Glenbrooke teen.”

  “How does she manage to fit in with the rest of the kids?”

  “She’s their idol. Seems to enjoy the role, too.”

  Something inside Jessica went out to Dawn. She imagined a lot of expectations were placed on Dawn to be a certain kind of girl and perform her expected role, not only for her parents but also for her peers. Jessica knew that sort of pressure, and she empathized with Dawn without having met her.

  “Sure is good to see Mr. McGregor recovering so well,” Teri said as they drove on. She turned down a street lined with trees that formed a natural canopy. “I love this street. It’s a little jog out of the way, but I take it so I can go through this tree tunnel. Wait until the fall when the leaves change. You’re going to love it here! I’m glad you came to Glenbrooke.”

  “I am, too,” Jessica said. She couldn’t express to Teri or anyone else just how glad she was.

  Chapter Six

  When Jessica set out to walk the four blocks to school the next morning, the sun had broken through the usual early morning clouds, and she could feel its warmth on her shoulders. She hummed softly, but when she turned the corner at Maple Street, her humming received some competition. A pair of birds squawked at each other on the telephone wires over her head. Just like my mom and dad used to argue.

  Jessica thought of Dawn and her divorced parents. Would my parents have divorced eventually if Mom had lived?

  A squirrel darted out from under a huge hydrangea bush and skittered past Jessica on its way to the telephone pole. With the squirrel’s sudden ascent, the birds flew away. Another squirrel poked its nose out from under the lavender snowball hydrangea. In a flash, he scampered up the pole, in hot pursuit of the first squirrel. Jessica imagined them to be courting. Opening the door in her mind marked “children’s stories,” Jessica began to unfurl mentally a story of two squirrels falling in love, cavorting together, having great adventures, and eventually raising a family of twelve baby squirrels. She decided she would title it, Under the Flowering Bush.

  That was her secret dream, to someday write a children’s storybook and to write it well enough that it would be published. Her English major had opened to her a world of authors whom she admired. For at least six years now she had kept a journal of ideas for children’s books. But she had never told anyone of her dream. It was hers alone, a solitary sort of fantasy.

  Her thoughts suddenly filled with an image of Kyle. Was he also some sort of fantasy? Jessica knew so little about him. He knew even less about her. And that’s how she needed to keep things. Pity. If ever she longed to be pursued the way that squirrel was chased up the phone pole, it was now.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Jessica scanned the phone wires down to the end of the street, looking for the playful squirrels. They were gone.

  Once inside the comfort zone of room 14, Jessica set to work recording her assignments in her lesson plan book for the first two weeks of school. She had arrived a little early and was glad for the chance to finish her planning before the all-day meetings began.

  A few minutes before nine o’clock, Jessica locked up her desk and headed for the meeting. More than anything else, she was looking forward to the food table, which had been bountifully stocked each day with muffins, fruit, coffee, and sometimes yogurt.

  This morning Jessica took two muffins, as much fruit as she could mound up on her small paper napkin, and a carton of strawberry yogurt. She hadn’t had much to eat since the hamburger and Coke with Kyle the day before at Dairy Queen.

  Last night she had tried to fix the last of her foot-long zucchini by slicing it up and frying it. Without any butter or oil, the thin circles burnt horribly, and smoke had filled the kitchen. Jessica was embarrassed when the smoke detector went off. She had aired out t
he house, washed the frying pan, and sadly picked out the five or six slices of zucchini that were still edible. Consoling herself by splurging and using one of her two remaining Lipton tea bags to make a cup of tea, Jessica had curled up on the couch with an old book of Walter de la Mare’s poems for children. She thought about how wonderful the school muffins would taste the next morning.

  She was right. Before she even found a seat, she took a bite of the blueberry muffin, and it melted in her mouth.

  “Jess, over here.” Teri waved from the second row.

  Jessica joined her, and Teri proudly presented her with a potted plant. The long, pointed leaves weren’t very pretty. Something from the cactus family, Jessica guessed.

  Teri must have noticed the skeptical look on Jessica’s face. “It’s the aloe vera plant I told you about. What did you think it was?”

  “I would have guessed a Venus flytrap.”

  “Those have red leaves,” Teri said. “Remember what I told you about this? Tear off a tip of the leaf like this and squeeze the gel out on your lip.”

  “Doesn’t it ruin the plant?” Jessica asked, popping her last bite of blueberry muffin into her mouth.

  “No, not at all. The plant heals itself.”

  “Kind of like a star fish,” the man behind them commented, leaning forward and inviting himself into the conversation.

  “Hi, Martin,” Teri said without turning around. Her voice carried a cool breeze.

  “And who is this?” asked the middle-aged, slim, bearded man. When neither of the women answered immediately, he jumped in with, “I’m Martin Monroe. Biology.” He extended a right hand to Jessica.

  “I’m Jessica,” she replied, placing her cup of coffee on the floor and turning to shake his hand. It felt cool and thin. “I’m teaching English this year.”

  “Very nice to meet you,” he said with a smile that revealed teeth with a slight gap between the front two. “Are you single gals roommates this year? You are single, aren’t you?”

  Jessica couldn’t help but feel as if she were cornered at some cheesy bar and this Martin guy was trying out his best pick-up lines on her.

  Before Jessica or Teri could answer, Charlotte stepped to the microphone and called the meeting to order. Everyone seemed to sit up a little straighter in their seats. Jessica suspected it was an involuntary reflex, not unlike the way a private would react when his sergeant marched into the barracks. She refused to respond that way to Charlotte and purposefully slumped down in her seat.

  The rest of the morning dragged on as the teachers listened to instructions on everything from earthquake procedures to filling out requisition forms for materials. In Jessica’s opinion, the instructions were overkill. Charlotte’s apparent need for control was already beginning to have a paralyzing effect on the teachers. She glanced around and noticed blank stares replacing the previously lively expressions on the teachers’ faces.

  Once again, Jessica refused to be manipulated. She flipped over the page in her handbook and on the back side wrote, Under the Flowering Bush. She then jotted down possible names for her little squirrels. Frank and Maude? Mac and Melanie?

  Puffy and Fluffy?

  Soon half the page was filled, and she had no idea what Charlotte had been droning on about. There was a pause and Charlotte said, “We’ll break now for lunch. I’ve had it catered, and I see they’re ready for us in the back of the room. Please try to eat quickly. We’re only breaking for half an hour.”

  Jessica and Teri filed into line with the rest of the sleepy-eyed teachers. Again, Jessica wasn’t shy about filling her plate. The stacked deli tray and potato salad looked delicious to her, especially since all she had left at home was less than half a bag of Ramen noodles and one tea bag.

  Teri and Jessica stepped outside to eat their lunch standing up. The change of position felt good. Teri lowered her head and closed her eyes while standing frozen in place. It looked to Jessica as if Teri had become dizzy and was trying to regain her equilibrium.

  “Are you okay?” Jessica asked, tilting her head and trying to peer at Teri’s closed eyes.

  Teri raised her eyelids slowly. A smile crept up her face. “I was praying,” she said softly.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t know. I thought…. Never mind. Go ahead. I hope I didn’t interrupt you or anything.”

  Teri laughed at Jessica’s apologetic words and said, “It’s okay, Jess. And don’t worry. I put in a good word for you, too.”

  Now Jessica laughed, but Teri didn’t.

  Strange girl, Jessica thought. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who prayed in public. I wonder if Charlotte will go over those rules this afternoon. “Regulations Regarding the Rights of Teachers to Pray Before Lunch.”

  Jessica took a big bite of potato salad. From behind her came Charlotte Mendelson’s voice. “Well, I see one of us doesn’t see the need to diet.”

  Forcing the rest of the spoonful of potato salad into her mouth, Jessica began to chew and declined to answer. She did notice that Charlotte seemed to parade her can of Slim Fast past Jessica as the principal moved on to the next gathering of teachers and announced, “Twenty more minutes, staff.”

  Jessica and Teri exchanged unspoken words with their expressive eyes and continued to eat their lunches. Before they had finished, Martin joined them and started up his “what’s your sign, baby” style of jargon again.

  “Will you please excuse us?” Teri asked before he had gotten any kind of response from either of them. “We need to make a run to the little girls’ room before the meeting begins.”

  Jessica followed her cue and walked with Teri down the hall to the faculty restroom. Half of her sandwich and a few more bites of potato salad were still on Jessica’s plate. Actually, her stomach must have shrunk in the past week due to her limited diet, and she found it hard to imagine how she was going to stuff the rest of the food into her mouth. But she couldn’t bring herself to throw away the food. Once they were inside the restroom, she decided to wrap the sandwich in a paper towel and stick it in her purse. She felt like a neurotic miser, but did it anyway.

  “I suppose I don’t need to tell you to beware of Martin the Masher,” Teri whispered once they were safe behind the bathroom doors.

  “He is something else,” Jessica said. “He reminds me of a mad scientist who experimented with lizards all his life and somehow got his molecules mixed up with theirs.” Jessica gave a little shiver. “Is he creepy but harmless? Or does he eat flies and slide under rocks when no one is looking?”

  “I don’t know. I try to keep my distance.”

  “To be on the safe side,” Jessica suggested, “why don’t we move our seats before the next round of meetings begins? I’ll feel a little better without him breathing down my neck.”

  “Good idea,” Teri agreed.

  They sat in the back this time, which gave them a little more room to nod off without being noticed. Jessica felt certain all the information they were covering was listed in the handbook and stack of orientation papers they had been handed the first day. She had skimmed the material already and had found little reason for Charlotte to have to repeat everything.

  After several hours of reviewing the information, Ms. Mendelson stopped mid-sentence and stared at the back door. Jessica looked over her shoulder. Kyle stood there in his firefighter uniform. She didn’t expect her heart to begin racing, but it did.

  Kyle looked at Jessica and smiled.

  “I don’t believe it,” Teri whispered when her eyes followed the trail of Kyle’s smile, and it landed on Jessica. “What?” Jessica whispered back.

  “Nothing.”

  Charlotte found her voice and instructed her staff to take a ten-minute break. She hurried to greet Kyle at the back door. Jessica stood and turned around, pretending to be stretching, but really trying to get a clear view of Kyle and Charlotte. Kyle lifted his clipboard and pointed with his pencil at the ceiling. Jessica guessed he must be in the middle of the fire inspection C
harlotte had requested. So why did he need to consult with her?

  “Very interesting,” Teri said softly.

  “What?” Jessica asked, sitting back down and scanning Teri’s face.

  Teri folded her arms across her chest, and tilting her head, she looked at Jessica as if seeing her in a brand new light. “I never would have guessed,” was all she said.

  “Guessed what?” Jessica wanted to grab Teri by the shoulders and shake her so she would spill the mystery beans.

  “Kyle told me last week that he had met somebody. I never guessed it was you.”

  “What do you mean it’s me? He didn’t meet me. He rescued me. He must have been telling you about someone else.”

  Teri shook her head. “Like who? Charlotte, maybe? I don’t think so, Jessica. Kyle didn’t tell me who it was, but after that smile he just gave you, I know it’s you.”

  Jessica felt the insides of her stomach begin to flutter. She had to put an end to this right now. “Teri, we’re talking like a bunch of high schoolers. We’re supposed to be mature teachers, remember? Not a couple of little crush cadets. They arrive on Tuesday.”

  Teri laughed aloud, and several of the teachers cast a glance her direction to see what was so funny. “That was very good, Jessica! I’m going to remember that: ‘little crush cadets.’ I like that.”

  Jessica had to smile. She hadn’t even realized that’s what she had said. Attempting to persuade Teri of her seriousness, Jessica said in a hushed voice, “Nothing is going on between Kyle and me, okay?”

  Teri stopped laughing, but her smirk remained. “You know, Jessica, denial is a wonderful thing when you’re in pain. It’s not such a wonderful thing when you’re in love.”

  “Pain?” Jessica questioned. She had learned a bit about pain lately. “Love?” she asked, secretly knowing that she knew very little about love. Then almost under her breath she said to Teri, “Aren’t they both about the same thing?”

  Teri looked at Jessica, her expression turning more solemn. “I don’t suppose they have to be, but sometimes I suppose they are.”